Japan and Cesium-137 – Webbish6 https://webbish6.com Jeannine Hall Gailey's Poetry Blog Mon, 04 Jul 2011 16:26:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 44757611 The Fourth of July, a review of She Returns to the Floating World, a Poem for Japan and some Recipes https://webbish6.com/the-fourth-of-july-a-review-of-she-returns-to-the-floating-world-a-poem-for-japan-and-some-recipes-2/ https://webbish6.com/the-fourth-of-july-a-review-of-she-returns-to-the-floating-world-a-poem-for-japan-and-some-recipes-2/#respond Mon, 04 Jul 2011 16:26:00 +0000 http://webbish6.com/the-fourth-of-july-a-review-of-she-returns-to-the-floating-world-a-poem-for-japan-and-some-recipes-2/ Happy Fourth of July, Everyone!

Thanks to Sandy Longhorn for her beautiful review of She Returns to the Floating World:
http://sandylonghorn.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-im-reading-she-returns-to-floating.html

For some delicious red, white, and blue recipes, go check out my blueberry ricotta gelato and grilled watermelon salad recipes at my gluten free blog here:
http://glutenfreenorthwestadventures.blogspot.com/

On a somewhat more sobering note, I read the disturbing news that Cesium-137 traces have entered the water supply of Tokyo, Japan, as a result of the nuclear power plant disasters out there. This poem, “Cesium Burns Blue,” describes the contamination of my childhood home, Oak Ridge, with this same isotope. It was first published in The Cincinnati Review Winter 2010 issue.

Cesium Burns Blue[1]

Copper burns green. Sodium yellow,
strontium red. Watch the flaming lights
that blaze across your skies, America –
there are burning satellites
even now being swallowed by your horizon,
the detritus of space programs long defunct,
the hollowed masterpieces of dead scientists.

Someone is lying on a grassy hill,
counting shooting stars,
wondering what happens
when they hit the ground.

In my back yard, they lit cesium
to measure the glow.
Hold it in your hand:
foxfire, wormwood, glow worm.

Cesium lights the rain,
absorbed in the skin,
unstable, unstable
dancing away, ticking away
in bones, fingernails, brain.
Sick burns through, burns blue.

[1] Cesium burns with a blue light, explodes on contact with water, and has a highly radioactive isotope which was used in experiments at Oak Ridge. It can cause mental instability or other problems if absorbed through the skin or ingested; children ingesting produce grown in contaminated soil might exhibit mental symptoms as well as physical symptoms later in life.

You can see me reading the poem last year in San Francisco at a Fourteen Hills reading, here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NolDPaTkZDk

My husband Glenn (a chemical engineer) wants me to remind you that our blue fireworks use less dangerous copper salts, which can burn blue or green, not Cesium.

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